Here's What's Really Happening with Marco Rubio in Iowa

AMES, IOWA—He's surging! Young Marco Rubio is surging! Just ask anyone. Really, ask anyone. Here he is, on the campus of Iowa State University and you can hardly stand in one place against the great riptide that is the Rubio campaign. You can get swept off to glory by the pure Marcomentum of Young Marco Rubio and his surge. And what is the power behind this virtual tsunami of fervor that is sweeping across the pasturelands?

It is the power of Yeah, OK, What The Hell. He'll Do.

Right now, the way to become the "establishment" favorite in the Republican presidential campaign is to be neither He, Trump nor Tailgunner Ted Cruz. That's it. That's the entire job description. The fact that the people in that part of the field have been treating each other like crabs in a barrel has nothing to do with it. There is a great void in the narrative that most Republicans—and far too many members of the elite political press—desperately want to be filled, lest they are forced to realize how far the prion disease has spread since that day in 1979 when Ronald Reagan first fed the party the monkey brains. It is that petrified denial that has kept at least five of this year's candidates in the race, and it is almost the entire engine behind Young Marco Rubio's mighty surge.

It is not that he is in any way the "moderate" choice. That word is as meaningless in Republican politics as the word "establishment." John Kasich is perceived to be a moderate, and he wants to implement the Worst Idea In American Politics. Jeb (!) Bush will hide under a table, waiting for a cock to crow, if you call him a "moderate." Nobody knows what the hell He, Trump is. One day, he's ripping up the deal with Iran and the next he's throwing tariffs on Mexican automobiles, and running the most explicitly protectionist Republican campaign since Pat Buchanan. Consider, for example, the murderer's row of surrogates that Rubio plans to bestow on the good folks of Iowa on Monday.

And, anyway, Young Marco Rubio has gone full wingnut on the single most wingnutty issue there is: He is the great youthful champion of neoconservative fantasyland.

"When I am commander-in-chief," said Rubio, "the best intelligence services in the world will find the terrorists, and the best military in the world will destroy the terrorists, and if we capture them, they're not going to get a lawyer, they're not going to get the right to remain silent, they're not going to a courtroom in Manhattan. They're getting a one-way ticket to Guantanamo Bay and we're going to find out everything they know."

He leaves it there, having placed the image of gleaming waterboards in the eager minds of his audience. But he does not say "torture." Oh, no. He does not do that because Marco Rubio, surging or not, remains a towering political lightweight and as complete a political coward as politics has seen in many a year. We should have been tipped by the way he turtled on his own immigration bill. Or by the way he describes his surrender on what was supposed to be his signature issue as a sacrifice he has made to the war on terror, that he changed on the issue because of Daesh, and not because it wouldn't sell out here in the heartland. Or by the way he talks about the president, now at every stop on the campaign:

"When did the American Dream begin to erode? I can point to one moment in particular. It came in the year 2008 when we elected a president who didn't want to fix the problems in America. He wanted to change America…A president who summarily and regularly undermines the Constitution…We can't elect Hillary Clinton president. We can't elect Bernie Sanders president. We can't elect one of them to succeed a president who sees violating the Constitution as part of his job description…When I take the oath of office, I will put my left hand on the Bible and my right hand up to heaven and I will swear to protect and to defend the Constitution of the United States and, unlike Barack Obama, I'll mean it."

This is quite something for a sitting United States Senator to say. If he believes it, then he is bound by the oath he took as a senator to propose the president's impeachment and to work as hard with like-minded members of the House Of Representatives to bring it about. He has no choice. That is his sworn duty under the Constitution. But he never says "impeachment." Oh no, he does not do that, because Young Marco Rubio—who is surging!—doesn't have the guts to do it, or the dedication to his job as a senator even to try. All he has is the perception of momentum, and the good fortune to have been born neither a Trump nor a Cruz. For the rest of us, the words of Mr. S. Spade of San Francisco will have to suffice: the cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.

Charles P. PierceCharles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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